“What do you think?” Hegseth said. “If there’s a small migrant army marching toward the United States — peacefully, but wants to cross our borders — how should it be handled?”

CNN’s Jim Sciutto, filling in on New Day Monday, was absolutely dumbfounded at Hegseth’s query.

“As often happens with issues like this, we enter a fact-free zone,” Scuitto said. He added, “You heard that Fox News rhetoric, ‘an army of migrants.’ I mean, it’s not an army. It’s a group of folks seeking asylum.”

Scuitto then seized upon President Donald Trump‘s subsequent tweet about “caravans” en route to the border, and noted that it was an escalation from the Fox & Friends chatter on the subject.

Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release. Getting more dangerous. “Caravans” coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!

“The president tweeted there are caravans, as if there are multiple groups of people storming the border,” Sciutto said. “That’s not true. It’s one group. Even the Fox News commentators noted there they will be arrested at the border.”

As to why the president is talking tough on the issue, Bloomberg correspondent Joshua Green mused that Trump has been getting increased blowback from his base ever since the omnibus spending bill was signed.

“As soon as that legislation was signed, Trump began to get a lot of heat from right wing media, from Breitbart News, from Ann Coulter,” Green said. “This was evidently conveyed to him with the dinners he had with a Fox News host [Sean Hannity] at Mar-a-Lago this weekend.”